5 ms·

> this is also a stunning example of survivorship bias. No, it's an example of why you have to allow people to pursue what at the time look like "curiosities",

by pdonis 9d ago

> this is also a stunning example of survivorship bias. No, it's an example of why you have to allow people to pursue what at the time look like "curiosities", even though most of them don't go anywhere--because the very small portion that do go somewhere, end up changing the world, and we don't know in advance which ones those are going to be. It's quite true that the funds we have for this are a finite resource. But that doesn't mean that "foreseeable practical applications" is a useful filter for how to deploy that resource.

oliculipolicula 9d ago
You know how drunken debates with friends over trivia became pointless with the advent of Google and Wikipedia. The debates didn't get better. But they could. They did. Today we have HN mods and HN citations and upvotes >useful filter There's also "useful friction" as _almost_ imagined by Tao here https://youtu.be/svl_1upFpQo?t=25m11s https://youtu.be/svl_1upFpQo?t=25m11s We can't know in advance, but something like the "weird cadence" that arises when 2 skilled humans try to do a threesome with an AI.. could be reified into a local measure (eutripsis) of how likely advances (conceptual or otherwise) are in the midterm
Dylan16807 9d ago
Yes you have to allow people to pursue these things. That's not a compelling argument for funding, especially when nobody was funding the people that did invent calculus.
- stymaar 9d ago
  > nobody was funding the people that did invent calculus. Of course someone was. Newton and Leibniz weren't living in autarky an some island. They had an income stream that was taken away from somewhere else and given to them so that they could afford working on their pet projects. The fact that it's not publicly funded doesn't change the fact that there's still resource allocation happening.
  - Dylan16807 9d ago
    I think by that definition every mathematician in the current day is funded, mission accomplished.
    - stymaar 9d ago
      > every mathematician in the current day is funded, This is tautological, “mathematician” being defined in the modern world as someone paid to do mathematics… Notice that the modern world is able able to sustain significantly more mathematicians than when “mathematicians” used to mean “someone well-off enough to work on mathematics in their ample amount of free time without worrying about their subsistence”.
      - Dylan16807 9d ago
        > This is tautological, “mathematician” being defined in the modern world as someone paid to do mathematics… Note that I'm including all the ones that a normal definition would not call paid, but your definition does. But yes when a definition declares that everyone doing a thing is "funded", it does get pretty tautological and get in the way of arguments for actual funding.
  - what 9d ago
    They worked other jobs, no? No one paid them specifically to invent calculus or anything of the sort.
    - stymaar 9d ago
      > They worked other jobs, no? This is an anachronism, you're projecting modern social organization to an era that worked very differently.
    - pdonis 9d ago
      During the years when Newton made his great discoveries, of calculus and universal gravitation, he had a scholarship from the University of Cambridge. (Note that it was not until a couple of decades later that Newton published this work.) After he got his MA he became a Fellow of Trinity College. So society was basically subsidizing him.
fmbb 9d ago
Correction: you don’t _have_ to, but technological advancement is faster if you do.
- eru 9d ago
  That's an empirical question. And you also need to justify why your country in particular should finance that. For the kind of research where benefits accrue to the inventor (or her employer) and others can be excluded so that the benefits don't 'spill over', then private companies can fund it. For the kind of research that spills over, you can just let the tax payers of that other country foot the bill. Eg the US can free-ride on Chinese research, and if having mathematicians in the population is good, the US can offer green cards to whatever has a math degree from a good enough university. There might be some intermediate research that has just enough spill over that a company won't do it, but a country might, should be a rare creature. And differently sized countries should have different sweet spots: some companies are bigger than some countries after all. But I don't think we see different countries select the research (mathematical or otherwise) with an eye towards exactly tailoring spill over.

by pdonis 9d ago

oliculipolicula 9d ago

You know how drunken debates with friends over trivia became pointless with the advent of Google and Wikipedia. The debates didn't get better. But they could. They did. Today we have HN mods and HN citations and upvotes >useful filter There's also "useful friction" as _almost_ imagined by Tao here https://youtu.be/svl_1upFpQo?t=25m11s https://youtu.be/svl_1upFpQo?t=25m11s We can't know in advance, but something like the "weird cadence" that arises when 2 skilled humans try to do a threesome with an AI.. could be reified into a local measure (eutripsis) of how likely advances (conceptual or otherwise) are in the midterm

Dylan16807 9d ago

Yes you have to allow people to pursue these things. That's not a compelling argument for funding, especially when nobody was funding the people that did invent calculus.

stymaar 9d ago
> nobody was funding the people that did invent calculus. Of course someone was. Newton and Leibniz weren't living in autarky an some island. They had an income stream that was taken away from somewhere else and given to them so that they could afford working on their pet projects. The fact that it's not publicly funded doesn't change the fact that there's still resource allocation happening.
- Dylan16807 9d ago
  I think by that definition every mathematician in the current day is funded, mission accomplished.
  - stymaar 9d ago
    > every mathematician in the current day is funded, This is tautological, “mathematician” being defined in the modern world as someone paid to do mathematics… Notice that the modern world is able able to sustain significantly more mathematicians than when “mathematicians” used to mean “someone well-off enough to work on mathematics in their ample amount of free time without worrying about their subsistence”.
    - Dylan16807 9d ago
      > This is tautological, “mathematician” being defined in the modern world as someone paid to do mathematics… Note that I'm including all the ones that a normal definition would not call paid, but your definition does. But yes when a definition declares that everyone doing a thing is "funded", it does get pretty tautological and get in the way of arguments for actual funding.
- what 9d ago
  They worked other jobs, no? No one paid them specifically to invent calculus or anything of the sort.
  - stymaar 9d ago
    > They worked other jobs, no? This is an anachronism, you're projecting modern social organization to an era that worked very differently.
  - pdonis 9d ago
    During the years when Newton made his great discoveries, of calculus and universal gravitation, he had a scholarship from the University of Cambridge. (Note that it was not until a couple of decades later that Newton published this work.) After he got his MA he became a Fellow of Trinity College. So society was basically subsidizing him.

fmbb 9d ago

Correction: you don’t _have_ to, but technological advancement is faster if you do.

eru 9d ago
That's an empirical question. And you also need to justify why your country in particular should finance that. For the kind of research where benefits accrue to the inventor (or her employer) and others can be excluded so that the benefits don't 'spill over', then private companies can fund it. For the kind of research that spills over, you can just let the tax payers of that other country foot the bill. Eg the US can free-ride on Chinese research, and if having mathematicians in the population is good, the US can offer green cards to whatever has a math degree from a good enough university. There might be some intermediate research that has just enough spill over that a company won't do it, but a country might, should be a rare creature. And differently sized countries should have different sweet spots: some companies are bigger than some countries after all. But I don't think we see different countries select the research (mathematical or otherwise) with an eye towards exactly tailoring spill over.